ok so not to merely be savage: the altruism debate is important within evolutionary theory, although it's very old, and kropotkin - both a very serious scientist and the best philosopher anarchism has produced - was already arguing, compellingly or even decisively, for the de waal position in 1902. (he too was drawing moral conclusions, the part that wasn't decisive at all.) because some of the early formulations of evolution just portrayed the whole world as a war of each against each, it seemed to justify dog-eat-dog capitalism. well that was ridiculous, and again, even if evolution was absolutely nothing but a spectacle of mutual devourment, it would not follow that we ought to devour each other. but the opposite view, that evolution justifies an ethics of cooperative action - is precisely as false or as simply misconceived, though perhaps not as reprehensible. and i just want to mark that i think altruism - pure altruism - is perfectly real and something we see and do all the time, and that we wouldn't still exist as a species without cooperation.

so the point is important although behindhand within evolutionary theory. (i do want to drop a monkeywrench into the dewaal's apparently effortless use of other primates as indications of our own evolutionary history: also just a breathtaking fallacy.) but it does not bear on what values we ought to have or on the justification of those values. obviously it does not. you can't get ethics out of evolution any more than you can get, say, the pythagorean theorem out of evolution, or keynesian monetary policy out of evolution, or the principles of literary criticism out of evolution, or the latitude of madagascar out of evolution, or the periodical table of the elements out of evolution, etc etc. that's ok! that's not what this stuff is for, and it's breathtakingly obvious that these folks are out of the realm of their expertise. they don't even really know what questions to ask, or what answers have actually been given. they can't even formulate the problem coherently. but evolutionary biology might be interesting and important even if it does not solve absolutely all questions.